Today was the final opportunity to actively command Curiosity before the Sun comes between us and Mars. Most of the instruments are safely stored for the solar conjunction break, but intrepid Navcam was available for some last-minute science observations. Navcam will measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, look for dust devils, and look for clouds in a series of images and movies on Sol 2506. After that, the remote sensing mast will turn its gaze down toward the workspace to guard against dust accumulation on the mast instruments.

While Curiosity will not receive commands from Earth during solar conjunction, she has already been loaded with a series of commands to keep her systematically gathering data for the next two weeks. REMS and RAD will acquire multiple measurements each sol, DAN will acquire one long passive measurement each sol, and Navcam and the front and rear Hazcams will each acquire one image per day. The mast's downward-looking view includes the "Glen Etive" drill hole, allowing Navcam to monitor any changes in the cuttings around the drill hole. DAN will also acquire active measurements twice during solar conjunction to exercise its neutron generator. The data gathered will be stored up for return once we regain reliable communications with Mars.

Just as solar conjunction is not time off for Curiosity, it is not time off for the science team! Without the responsibilities of commanding the rover, the team has more time to pore over the spectacular data Curiosity has gathered for us. It takes time to translate each image, mosaic, and spectrum into a better understanding of what happened in Gale crater, and conjunction affords us more of this time to think deeply and carefully. Ultimately, the time dedicated to science turns into papers, which are one of the many ways the science team communicates what it has learned with our colleagues and the wider public.

If you miss Curiosity while she is out of contact, enjoy your own tour through all our images here. We promise there is enough to see there to get you through two weeks!

About this Blog

These blog updates are provided by self-selected Mars Science Laboratory mission team members who love to share what Curiosity is doing with the public.

Dates of planned rover activities described in these reports are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.

Contributors

Sterling Algermissen

Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Ryan Anderson

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Mariah Baker

Planetary Geologist; Johns Hopkins University; Baltimore, MD

Michael Battalio

Atmospheric Scientist; Texas A&M University; College Station, TX

Kristen Bennett

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Fred Calef

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Brittney Cooper

Atmospheric Scientist; York University; Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Sean Czarnecki

Planetary Geologist; Arizona State University; Tempe, AZ

Lauren Edgar

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Christopher Edwards

Planetary Geologist; Northern Arizona University; Flagstaff, AZ

Abigail Fraeman

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Scott Guzewich

Atmospheric Scientist; NASA/GSFC; Greenbelt, MD

Samantha Gwizd

Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN

Ken Herkenhoff

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Rachel Kronyak

Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN

Sarah Lamm

Planetary Geologist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM

Michelle Minitti

Planetary Geologist; Framework; Silver Spring, MD

Claire Newman

Atmospheric Scientist, Aeolis Research; Pasadena, CA

Catherine O’Connell

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Melissa Rice

Planetary Geologist; Western Washington University; Bellingham, WA

Mark Salvatore

Planetary Geologist; University of Michigan; Dearborn, MI

Susanne Schwenzer

Planetary Geologist; The Open University; Milton Keynes, U.K.

Ashley Stroupe

Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Dawn Sumner

Planetary Geologist; University of California Davis; Davis, CA

Vivian Sun

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Lucy Thompson

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Ashwin Vasavada

MSL Project Scientist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Roger Wiens

Geochemist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM

Tools on the Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover has tools to study clues about past and present environmental conditions on Mars, including whether conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life. The rover carries:

The 28 m drive on Sol 1174 ran successfully and Curiosity is now parked in front of a beautiful sand sheet and sand dune! Today science and engineering teams cooked up a full 3-sol plan, to account for the second half of the Thanksgiving hol

There was a problem processing the latest data from MSL at the DeepSpace Network station that received it, but the data are now availableand confirm that the Sol 1140 activities completed successfully.

As you can see, our mini-drill over the weekend went well, so we are GO fordrilling "Big Sky" on sol 1119! The hope is that this location will provide agood sample of the "typical" rock in the area to compare with some of theinteresting

It’s time to drill again! After much deliberation, we havedecided to try drilling the target "Big Sky" at our current location, in hopesof getting a good sample of relatively unaltered bedrock to compare with someof the altered rocks we

The drive on Sol 1111 stopped early after just over 15meters because we were driving over rough terrain and part of the rover’ssuspension exceeded the allowed amount of tilt (this is not a physical limit,just a threshold in the software

Over the weekend,Curiosity had a successful ~ 21 m drive, and we’re currently parked in front of a beautiful outcrop of the Murray formation (shown in the bottom half of the above Navcam image, overlain by Stimson).

We had another successful drive on sol 1074, putting us in agood position for the weekend! The main activity for the weekend is using theSample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to analyze some of the recent drillsample that we collecte

This morning, the MSL operations team was very happy to see that drilling into Buckskin was successful! The weekend plan therefore has more arm activities, including transferring the sample to the scoop for inspection.

To paraphrase our SOWG chair’s paraphrasing of theDeclaration of Independence at the start of today’s SOWG meeting: "When in thecourse of human events, it becomes necessary to plan a 4 sol plan, we assemblea group of patriots to make th

MSL is in a good position for contact science observations on an interesting outcrop of sedimentary rock , so the rover will be busy this weekend! We had to change the timing of the arm activities a bit to optimize the illum

The Sol 960 drive went as planned, for a total ofover 102 meters! The rover has driven far enough since the last fullset of MAHLI images were acquired that it's time to take another fullset to look for more wheel w

The Sol 957 drive went well, and the rover has officiallydriven 10 kilometers ! (Last week I announced that we had reached 10k, butthat was 10k measured by how many times the wheels have spun, not how faracross the surface of Mars the r

We are continuing our driving tour of Artist’s Drive, and weshould be reaching the 10k mark on Curiosity’s odometer in the sol 951 plan!The rover will start off the day with a targeted science block full of Mastcamobservations.

The MAHLI team was well prepared for contactscience today, but had to scramble to react to news early this morningthat the right front wheel is perched on a small rock and therefore isnot in a safe position for arm contac

The engineers on the team have been working hard to understandthe current fluctuation that caused the arm to halt on Sol 911, and they are expectingto wrap up their diagnostics this week! In the meantime, we on the scienceteam have been

The Sol 887 data received this morning show that asample portion was successfully delivered to SAM, and the un-sieved part of the sample was dumped onto the ground as planned (the pile is justabove center in this image ).

The mini-drill activities planned for Sol 881 went well, so we are "go" to drill and acquire a new sample on Sol 882! I helped plan the Sol 881 MAHLI images, so was particularly happy to see them this morning.

In spite of missing a command uplink due to a temporary outage at one of the Deep Space Network sites early last week, the flight software transition went well and the MSL operations team is back to planning science activities! Lots of good observ